'Secret serum' could save American Ebola victims as second man in Lagos falls ill

Two Americans who caught Ebola virus in Liberia have been treated with a new,
untested drug – which could hold the key to their recovery – as another man
in Nigeria falls ill

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Dr. Kent Brantly and his wife, AmberPhoto: AP

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Jeremy Writebol holds a photograph of his mother and father. Nancy Writebol is a missionary stricken with Ebola.Photo: AP

Harriet Alexander and Mike Pflanz in Nairobi

6:26PM BST 04 Aug 2014

The twoAmericandoctors who have caught Ebola have been treated with a new "secret serum" which could potentially save their lives. The revelation comes as another doctor, who treated the man who died in Africa's most populous city, Lagos, fell ill with the disease.

Healthcare workers are among those most at risk of contracting the virus, which is currently killing 60 per cent of all infected people.

While there remains no cure for the virus, a representative from the US National Institutes of Health contacted Samaritan's Purse – the charity they worked for in Liberia – and offered the experimental treatment, known as ZMapp.

The treatment is said to work by preventing the virus from entering and infecting new cells.

A source close to the Atlanta hospital, where Dr Brantly is being treated, told CNN: "Within an hour of receiving the medication, Brantly's condition was nearly reversed. His breathing improved; the rash over his trunk faded away."

By the next morning, Dr Brantly was able to take a shower on his own before getting on a specially designed Gulfstream air ambulance jet to be evacuated to the United States.

Dr Writebol was also administrated with the drug, which was transported to Liberia in a special sub-zero container.

She showed a less remarkable recovery, but is hoped to travel to the US on Tuesday to continue her treatment.

According to CNN, the drug was developed by the biotech firm Mapp Biopharmaceutical, based in California. The patients were told that this treatment had never been tried before in a human being but had shown promise in small experiments with monkeys.

Four monkeys infected with Ebola survived after being given the serum within 24 hours of infection. Two of four additional monkeys that started the therapy within 48 hours after infection also survived. One monkey that was not treated died within five days of exposure to the virus.

ZMapp has not been approved for human use, and has not even gone through the clinical trial process, which is standard to prove the safety and efficacy of a medication. The process by which the medication was made available to Dr Brantly and Dr Writebol is highly unusual.

Health officials in Nigeria, meanwhile, confirmed that a second man in the country had contracted the disease.

Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian employee of the government, died in Lagos after flying from Liberia – en route to the US. On Monday it was announced that his doctor had fallen ill.

"As of today, one of the doctors that treated the late Mr Sawyer has tested positive for the Ebola virus," said Onyebuchi Chukwu, from the Nigerian health ministry. Of 70 people who were under surveillance, eight had been "quarantined at an isolation ward provided by the Lagos state government," he added.

The news comes after health workers said drugs that could fight Ebola are not particularly complicated but pharmaceutical firms see no economic reason to invest in making them because the virus’ few victims are poor Africans.

Outbreaks of the deadly haemorrhagic fever have so far been limited to remote corners of African countries, and have killed a little over 2,400 people since the first infections were identified in 1976 in what was then Zaire.

Developing, trialling and licensing vaccines or treatments would cost significant amounts of money, and drugs companies argue there is not enough demand to justify the outlay.

“These outbreaks affect the poorest communities on the planet. Although they do create incredible upheaval, they are relatively rare events,” said Daniel Bausch, a medical researcher in the US who works on Ebola and other infectious diseases.

“So if you look at the interest of pharmaceutical companies, there is not huge enthusiasm to take an Ebola drug through phase one, two, and three of a trial and make an Ebola vaccine that maybe a few tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people will use.”

“We now have a couple of different vaccine platforms that have shown to be protective with non-human primates,” Mr Bausch said. “That's the good news, but we've had a real break in trying to move forward to get these into human trials and get them out there as a real tool we can use for people infected with these viruses.”

A lot of that has to do with what Prof John Ashton, Britain’s leading public health doctor, termed the “moral bankruptcy” of profit-driven drugs developers.

“We must...tackle the scandal of the unwillingness of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in research to produce treatments and vaccines, something they refuse to do because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don't justify the investment,” Dr Ashton told The Independent on Sunday.

“This is the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of an ethical and social framework.”

At least 826 people have died among 1,440 people infected with the virus, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. One man, an American, died in Nigeria.

Senior health workers including the head of the World Health Organisation have said the disease’s spread is “out of control” and will likely go on at least until the end of the year.